Sir Philip McDougall Rutnam, (born 19 June 1965) is a British former civil servant who served as

Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office The Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Home Office is the permanent secretary of the Home Office, the most senior civil servant in the department, charged with running its affairs on a day-to-day basis. Home Office Permanent Secretaries ...

from 2017 until his resignation on 29 February 2020. Prior to this, he was the Permanent Secretary at the

Department for Transport The Department for Transport (DfT) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have not been devolved. The d ...

for five years and also Acting Permanent Secretary at the

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills , type = Department , logo = Department for Business, Innovation and Skills logo.svg , logo_width = 200px , logo_caption = , picture = File:Лондан. 2014. Жнівень 26.JPG , seal = , se ...

in 2010. Rutnam is currently Chair of the

National Churches Trust The National Churches Trust, formerly the Historic Churches Preservation Trust, is a British registered charity whose aim is to "promote and support church buildings of historic, architectural and community value across the UK". It carries out th ...

, the UK's national conservation charity for churches, chapels and meeting houses open for worship. He is also a Council Member of the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institut ...

and a Non-Executive Director of

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust is an NHS foundation trust that provides physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset. Its services are de ...

, where he chairs the partnership to redevelop the

Warneford Hospital The Warneford Hospital is a hospital providing mental health services at Headington in east Oxford, England. It is managed by the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. History The hospital opened as the ''Oxford Lunatic Asylum'' in July 1826. It ...

site as Oxford's new centre for treatment and research linked to brain science and mental health. After Rutnam resigned from the Government in February 2020, he began legal action against the Home Office for

constructive dismissal In employment law, constructive dismissal, also called constructive discharge or constructive termination, occurs when an employee resigns as a result of the employer creating a hostile work environment. Since the resignation was not truly volu ...

. As a consequence of his statement, the Prime Minister asked the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests to investigate the conduct of the Home Secretary,

Priti Patel Priti Sushil Patel (born 29 March 1972) is a British politician who served as Home Secretary from 2019 to 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, she was Secretary of State for International Development from 2016 to 2017. Patel has been the Me ...

, towards staff. The Adviser later found that she had breached the

Ministerial Code The Ministerial Code is a document setting out "rules" and standards for government ministers in the United Kingdom. Separate codes exist for ministers of the Scottish Government, the Northern Ireland Executive (based on the St Andrews Agreemen ...

. The legal action was settled in March 2021 in a settlement worth approximately £376,000 including a contribution to Rutnam's legal costs of £30,000.

Early life and education

Born in

Bromley Bromley is a large town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley. It is south-east of Charing Cross, and had an estimated population of 87,889 as of 2011. Originally part of Kent, Bromley became a market town, char ...

, Rutnam was educated at

Dulwich College Preparatory School Dulwich Prep London (DPL), formerly known as Dulwich College Preparatory School, is an independent preparatory school in Dulwich, south London, England for boys aged 3–13 years. The current Head Master is Louise Davidson. In 1938 headmaster ...

Dulwich College Dulwich College is a 2–19 independent, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...

Trinity Hall, Cambridge Trinity Hall (formally The College or Hall of the Holy Trinity in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by ...

, and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

RUTNAM, Philip McDougall
''Who's Who 2014'', A & C Black, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 where he was a Kennedy Scholar

Career

Rutnam joined the

Civil Service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

in 1987 where he held posts at the

Treasury A treasury is either *A government department related to finance and taxation, a finance ministry. *A place or location where treasure, such as currency or precious items are kept. These can be state or royal property, church treasure or in p ...

. He also worked for

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

and later joined

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

where he helped build the organisation from inception and was Partner, Competition and Regulation and a member of the Board. He joined the

as Director General and a board member in 2009.

Department for Transport

Rutnam became

Permanent Secretary A permanent secretary (also known as a principal secretary) is the most senior Civil Service (United Kingdom), civil servant of a department or Ministry (government department), ministry charged with running the department or ministry's day-to-day ...

at the

in April 2012 with the Secretary of State,

Justine Greening Justine Greening (born 30 April 1969) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Education from 2016 to 2018. Prior to that, she served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 2010 to 2011, Secretary of State for Transport ...

, commenting that his "outstanding record and business focused skillset will be tremendous assets". As of 2015, Rutnam was paid a salary of between £170,000 and £174,999, making him one of the 328 most highly paid people in the British public sector at that time. He oversaw the development of

HS2 High Speed 2 (HS2) is a planned high-speed railway line in England, the first phase of which is under construction in stages and due for completion between 2029 and 2033, depending on approval for later stages. The new line will run from its m ...

, the creation of

Highways England National Highways, formerly the Highways Agency and later Highways England, is a government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving motorways and major A roads in England. It also sets highways standards used by all fo ...

, a review of airport policy, a substantial completion of works on

Thameslink Thameslink is a 24-hour main-line route in the British railway system, running from , , , and via central London to Sutton, , , Rainham, , , , and . The network opened as a through service in 1988, with severe overcrowding by 1998, carrying m ...

, a new approach to rail franchising after the failure of the West Coast procurement begun in 2010, and a reset of the £61 billion

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's leng ...

improvement plan from 2012.

Disability Champion

From 2015 to 2020 he was Disability Champion for the Civil Service.

Home Office

On 27 February 2017, it was announced that Rutnam would replace Mark Sedwill as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. with the Cabinet Secretary,

Jeremy Heywood Jeremy John Heywood, Baron Heywood of Whitehall, (31 December 1961 – 4 November 2018) was a British civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary to David Cameron and Theresa May from 2012 to 2018 and Head of the Home Civil Service from 2014 ...

, noting his “strong track record of leadership and achievement”. Rutnam took up the post in April 2017. He oversaw the Home Office response to the

Grenfell Tower Fire On 14 June 2017, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST and burned for 60 hours. 72 people died, two later in hospital, with more than 70 injured and 223 escapin ...

,"Home Office report and accounts 2017 - 2018" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-annual-report-and-accounts-2017-to-2018 the Windrush Scandal,"Home Office annual report and accounts 2018 - 2019" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-annual-report-and-accounts-2018-to-2019 and series of terrorist attacks between 2017 and 2018, as well as the rollout of the

European Union Settlement Scheme The European Union Settlement Scheme (the EU Settlement Scheme or EUSS) is an immigration regime of the United Kingdom introduced by the Home Office in 2019, under the new Appendix EU of the UK's Immigration Rules, in response to the Brexit sit ...

and preparations for

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...

. Following the Windrush Scandal he said he deeply regretted not identifying this as a systemic issue and that the department had not understood enough about the population affected. On 29 April 2018

Amber Rudd Amber Augusta Rudd (born 1 August 1963) is a British former politician who served as Home Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2018 to 2019. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Hastings and Rye, fi ...

resigned as

Home Secretary The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...

because she had claimed that there were no targets for removals and then, when it turned out there had been targets, she claimed to have been unaware that they existed. Rutnam was appointed a

Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved Bathing#Medieval ...

in the

2018 New Year Honours The 2018 New Year Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The New Year Honours are awarded as part of the New Year celebratio ...

for public service.

Resignation

On 29 February 2020 Rutnam announced his resignation, stating publicly that he would sue the Government for

. In his statement he said: “One of my duties as Permanent Secretary was to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of our 35,000 people. This created tension with the Home Secretary, and I have encouraged her to change her behaviours. This has been a very difficult decision but I hope that my stand may help in maintaining the quality of government in our country, which includes hundreds of thousands of civil servants loyally dedicated to delivering this government’s agenda”. Sir Mark Sedwill wrote in his official response that he regretted his decision, saying that he was "grateful for your devoted public service and excellent contribution over the course of your long and distinguished career in the Civil Service...you have ever been mindful of the Civil Service values, demonstrated in the way you have conducted yourself in your roles.”. A report by Sir Alex Allan, the Prime Minister's Independent Advisor on Ministerial Standards, later concluded that

's approach "amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying" and that she had "not consistently met the high standards expected of her". On 4 March 2021, the Government announced that it had settled Rutnam's legal claims. It later confirmed that the value of the settlement was approximately £376,000, and that the claims had been for unfair dismissal due to making protected disclosures under

whistleblowing A whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person, often an employee, who reveals information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe or fraudulent. Whi ...

laws and/or

health and safety Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at wo ...

law.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rutnam, Philip McDougall 1965 births Living people Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for the Home Department Permanent Under-Secretaries of State for Transport Civil servants in HM Treasury Civil servants in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills People educated at Dulwich College Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge Harvard University alumni Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath 21st-century British civil servants